RICK METHOT: Mega-expo shot down over gun policy

The 10-day, nationally known outdoor show which draws 1,000 vendors and a quarter-million attendees and was set to open this Saturday?

Not happening.The 2013 Eastern Sports & Outdoor Show at the Pennsylvania Farm Show Complex & Expo Center in Harrisburg, Pa., has been “postponed.”

With no future date set and the logistics of staging such an event, figure “postponed” means “dead,” at least for 2013.

After 47 years in the newspaper game, including covering cops and politicos, nothing much surprises me, but this development did. The Pennsy extravaganza is not 20 guys setting up card tables to peddle their wares at the local firehouse rental hall — this event is the major leagues.

Known to most as simply “the Harrisburg Show,” it’s an event that often filled two busloads of sports for the trip run by the Mercer County Chapter of the NJ Federation of Sportsmens Clubs.

The show has been put on hold due to vendors bailing out in droves.

It started as a trickle of angry vendors deciding to bolt until nearly 200, including such influential outfits as the Pennsylvania Federation of Sportsmen and the National Wild Turkey Federation, said adios.

What triggered the massive exodus was the show promoter’s refusal to allow modern sporting rifles to be displayed at the event.

“Modern sporting rifles” in this case means equipment that looks military in nature, such as the AR-15, or any image of what is perceived as an “assault weapon.”

In other words, guns that look nasty and can fire a boatload of bullets very quickly and have been linked to some, not all, of the tragic mass shootings in this country.

“AR” is simply a designation of a firearm developed by the ArmaLite Company and became the M-16 used in Vietnam. The AR-15 is made by Colt for civilian use, mostly by target shooters.

Since this is a legal, so far, sporting arm, many of the vendors took it as an assault on Second Amendment rights to ban them from the show.

It should be noted that traditional-looking rifles and shotguns would be shown at the event.

At first the outfit running the show, Reed Exhibitions, stonewalled it, saying the boycott didn’t matter and the event would go on.It finally caved under a landslide of negative publicity and the thought that the event could become contentious, with vendors and folks whoshowed up leaving ending up displeased.

A statement by Reed Exhibitions said, in part, “Our original decision not to include certain products (at the show) was made to preserve the historical focus on the hunting and fishing traditions enjoyed by American families. In the current climate we felt the presence of MSR’s would distract from the theme…disrupting the broader experience of our guests.”

Reed Exhibitions is a global outfit with headquarters in the U.K., but its U.S. office location is in Connecticut. Interesting.

According to Harrisburg tourism, the show’s pullout could cost state capital area $80 million in revenue.

The event locked up 12,000 room reservations in 22 local hotels, and they say the dollar figure is “conservative” because it doesn’t factor in money from parking, food and beverage, service and rental fees nor the lost room-tax revenue.

OK, sorry for that, Harrisburg, but the larger issue is the gun policy of promoters, how much clout vendors have, and whether potential attendees would shun a show over the issue.

It’s not necessarily a good thing that a sportsmen’s show was done in by sportsmen rather than anti-gun fanatics, who must be spasmodic with glee over the development.

A source familiar with the Keystone State Capital’s business world, who wished to be unnamed, told The Trentonian in an e-mail, “This (show) will not happen in 2013. The logistics to get everyone open for a new date and even finding an open date for the venue will make this impossible for a “postponed” title. When we saw this, we knew it was a ‘canceled’ spin.”

He added, “this could be the death of this event company from what I’m reading online and in social media.”

KUDOS TO ALLOnce again, the Clover Rod & Gun Club, founded in Trenton in 1948, put on a fun day at its recent tower shoot in Kingwood Township. There was a five-course hot meal in a fireplace-warmed clubhouse after the shoot. If you left hungry, it wasn’t the club’s fault.

Thanks goes to club prez Bobby Quarino, who gave me and another old guy pal a ride back to the parking area on his presidential limo, a camo ATV.

— Check the Out in the Open blog for a lot of stuff we couldn’t fit in here.Contact me at rikwrite@aol.com.